The One Word That Changes Your Net Worth
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✨ If you want real financial change, it starts with a single shift in attention.
✨ This shift determines whether your wealth grows or stagnates.
✨ And it is the difference between staying stuck and finally moving forward.
Let me show you what I mean.
The Tale of Two Farmers
In a valley where the soil was rich but temperamental, two farmers worked neighboring plots of land.
When an unexpected late frost followed by weeks of relentless rain destroyed most of the crops in the valley, Casey stood at the edge of his ruined fields, arms crossed.
The weather service got it wrong again, he muttered. These seed companies sell us inferior products. The government does nothing to help. What chance do we have?
Jordan surveyed his own devastated fields with a different perspective. He pulled out a worn notebook and began writing.
What could he have done differently?
Should he have diversified his crops more?
Could he have invested in better drainage?
What had the farmers on the eastern side of the valley done that seemed to minimise their losses?
Five years later, Casey was still farming the same way, still complaining about the forces beyond his control. His yields remained mediocre and his debts had grown.
Jordan had completely transformed his operation. He had implemented new water management systems, diversified his crops, and built relationships with other successful farmers who shared their knowledge.
🌱 His farm was thriving.
The difference was not luck, intelligence, or initial resources.
It was a simple but profound choice about where to direct their attention.
The Mirror Test
Most of us have a bit of Casey in us.
When our investments tank, we blame the market.
When we overspend, we blame advertising or stress.
When we are not saving enough, we blame stagnant wages.
These explanations often contain truth, but they rarely contain solutions.
Taking financial responsibility does not mean ignoring systemic problems or pretending luck does not exist.
It means asking a different question.
Instead of Who or what is to blame? we ask:
What can I control?
This shift changes everything.
Our brains prefer the soothing balm of external blame.
When things go wrong for us, we blame circumstances.
When things go wrong for others, we blame their decisions.
This bias protects our ego, but it comes at a steep price.
When we externalise all responsibility for our financial outcomes, we simultaneously externalise all our power to change them.
The Lottery Winner Paradox
If external circumstances are all that count, then lottery winners should stay rich.
Yet studies show that roughly seventy percent of lottery winners end up broke within a few years. How is this possible?
Financial outcomes are less about what happens to you and more about how you respond to what happens to you.
The lottery winners who went broke had received extraordinary good fortune, but they had not developed the habits, mindsets, and knowledge necessary to manage wealth.
Meanwhile, countless people with modest incomes build substantial wealth through consistent saving, prudent investing, and patient accumulation. They take responsibility for their financial education and their choices.
The Humility Paradox
Here is an interesting paradox.
Taking responsibility requires confidence that your actions matter.
Yet the most financially successful people often display remarkable humility about their limitations.
Warren Buffett is famous for his humility. He openly discusses his mistakes, acknowledges the role of luck, and constantly emphasises how much he still has to learn.
He once said:
It is good to learn from your mistakes. It is better to learn from other people’s mistakes.
The overconfident investor believes they have figured everything out.
The humble, responsible investor knows they are perpetually learning, adjusting, and improving.
Guess which one performs better over the long term?
Common Responsibility Dodges
Let me be clear.
Systemic issues exist and not everyone has equal opportunities.
Some people face steeper climbs than others.
I am not going to sit here and pretend everyone starts off equal because they do not.
Some are born with a silver spoon in the mouth and some are born into horrible poverty. Most people are somewhere in between.
But acknowledging external challenges is different from using them as a comprehensive excuse for inaction.
Here are the most common responsibility dodges.
The market is rigged
There is truth here, but millions of ordinary people still build wealth through simple, long term strategies like index fund investing.
The question is not whether advantages exist.
The question is whether you will use their existence as a reason to do nothing.
I did not have the advantages others had
Maybe your parents did not teach you about money.
Maybe you started with debt instead of a trust fund.
These are real disadvantages, but they are unchangeable facts about your past.
The only question that matters is what you do from here.
I am just not good with money
This masquerades as humility while actually being an abdication of responsibility.
Being good with money is not an innate trait.
It is a skill that can be learned.
When you say this, what you are really saying is:
I am not willing to learn.
That is a choice.
What Responsibility Actually Looks Like
Taking financial responsibility is not about self flagellation.
It is about directing your energy toward what you can control.
Here is what that looks like in practice.
Acknowledge mistakes without dwelling on them
Did you make a poor investment? Overspend on credit cards?
Acknowledge it, extract the lesson, and move forward.
As Thomas Edison said about his failures:
I have not failed. I have just found ten thousand ways that will not work.
Seek knowledge actively
Nobody is born knowing how to manage money effectively.
Read books.
Listen to reputable podcasts.
The information is out there and much of it is free.
Your financial education is your responsibility.
We are living in an age where information is everywhere.
Make a plan and adjust it
Waiting for the perfect strategy is a form of avoiding responsibility.
A mediocre plan that you actually follow beats a perfect plan that stays in your head.
Accept the dichotomy
You cannot control market crashes or inflation rates.
You can control how much you save, how you invest, and how you respond to setbacks.
Wisdom lies in distinguishing between the two.
Practise financial humility
Stay teachable.
The moment you think you have figured everything out is exactly the moment you become vulnerable to catastrophic mistakes.
Building Your Responsibility Muscle
If you have spent years externalising financial responsibility, changing this pattern will not happen overnight.
Here are some practical ways to start:
Keep a decision journal
Write down financial decisions as you make them.
Review them six months later.
This builds self awareness and accountability.
Ask better questions
When something goes wrong, instead of asking Why did this happen to me? ask What can I learn from this?
The quality of your questions determines the quality of your answers.
Find an accountability partner
Share your financial goals with someone you trust and check in regularly.
Celebrate small wins
Did you resist an impulse purchase?
Did you contribute to your savings?
Acknowledge these victories.
Taking responsibility includes giving yourself credit.
🎉 Small wins compound just like money does.
The Path Forward
Remember Casey and Jordan?
The difference between them was not the challenges they faced.
Both dealt with the same weather, the same market conditions, the same economic realities.
The difference was where they chose to focus their energy.
Casey spent his energy cataloguing excuses.
Jordan spent his energy understanding what he could control and then controlling it.
Your financial life works the same way.
You can spend your energy cataloguing all the reasons why building wealth is hard.
Or you can spend that energy learning, planning, adjusting, and growing.
Both paths require effort.
Only one leads somewhere.
Taking financial responsibility is not about ignoring systemic problems or pretending everyone starts from the same place.
It is about recognising that even within constraints, you have choices.
And those choices, compounded over time, determine your financial trajectory.
🌾 The farmers who take responsibility for their harvests do not have better weather. They have better practices.
Stop waiting for ideal conditions.
Start working with the conditions you have.
Your financial future begins with two simple words:
I am responsible.
And once you say them
Once you truly mean them
Everything changes.
Next week, I’ll explain why some of the richest people I know have almost no money.
I also catch myself behaving like a Casey sometimes -- perhaps most times if I'm being honest. I'm trying to learn how to be more of a Jordan. You gave me some very memorable lines to stick with while working on that. Especially loved this one: "When we externalise all responsibility for our financial outcomes, we simultaneously externalise all our power to change them."